By Order of the Prince. Carla Cassidy

its return.

      When she got into her car she quickly scanned the interior, noting the tear in the passenger seat, the faint layer of dust that covered the dashboard. Not exactly fit for royalty, but the ten-year-old car was paid off and still ran perfectly well. He’d just have to deal with the less-than-royal transportation.

      She told herself that one of the reasons she wanted to help him was because this whole ordeal had hammered the hotel with negative publicity. But she suspected the truth of the matter was that she was desperate for something, anything that might fill the vast loneliness in her life, even if it was just for a single night.

      She pulled up against the curb by the door she’d told Antoine to exit and watched as he strode toward her. Once again she was struck by his handsomeness and as he flashed a quick smile to her a crazy burst of heat momentarily usurped her nervous anxiety.

      “Mission accomplished,” he said as he slid into the passenger seat. “Nobody saw my escape.”

      “Won’t somebody worry if you aren’t in your room?” she asked as she pulled away from the curb.

      “I have my cell phone with me and told my staff that I was retiring for the night and didn’t want to be disturbed for any reason. Nobody will even know that I’m missing from my suite,” he assured her.

      Beth gripped the steering wheel tightly and headed toward the small town of Dumont. The scenery was spectacular with the last gasp of the sun sparking off the distant mountains and painting the landscape in lush shades of deep gold.

      Antoine looked out the window and even though he was silent she felt a pulsing energy radiating from him. He turned to look at her, as if he’d felt her surreptitious gaze. “Do you think Jane will help us?”

      “If anyone can pull a print from those papers, she can,” Beth replied. “But, she’s a by-the-book kind of woman. She might insist that the notes be handed over immediately to Sheriff Wolf.”

      “Then I’ll just have to convince her that that’s not in our best interest,” he replied with an easy confidence.

      “She’s pretty tough,” Beth warned.

      “Yes, but I’m pretty charming,” he countered.

      Beth gave a rueful laugh. “You charmed that envelope right out of my pocket.”

      He sobered and she felt his gaze, intense and piercing on her. “I had a feeling you’d found something important and it was equally important that I convince you to tell me.”

      “Do you always get what you want?” she asked lightly.

      “It’s certainly rare that anyone tells me no.”

      “I would imagine that being surrounded by yes-men could get a little boring at times.”

      “Perhaps,” he replied and then cast his gaze out the side window once again.

      The town of Dumont, Wyoming, was a small, charming place with historic buildings that dated back to the early 1800s. It had been a town filled with good, hard-working people before the royals had arrived. Now the streets were clogged with news vans and strangers.

      Beth drove down the main drag and parked in front of the brick courthouse. “Jane’s lab and offices are on the second floor,” she said as she turned off the engine.

      Antoine glanced at his wristwatch. “Won’t the offices be closed by now?”

      “Security will let her know we’re here and it’s rare that Jane isn’t at work this late in the evening,” Beth explained.

      Together they got out of the car and she noticed that Antoine did a quick sweep of the area with his narrowed gaze. Apparently he saw nothing to cause him alarm and they walked to the front door of the courthouse where Beth gestured to the security guard inside.

      Within minutes they were in the elevator taking them to the second floor and Jane. She met them at the doorway of her office, her hazel eyes widening as she saw Antoine. “Prince Antoine, Beth…what’s going on?”

      Antoine glanced up and down the hallway and then gestured to her office. “Ms. Cameron, perhaps we could speak to you in private.”

      “Of course.” Jane ushered them into the small office and closed the door behind them.

      “I was instructed today to pack up Sheik Amir Khalid’s items in his suite to be stored until we know what happened to him or somebody from his family came to claim them. While checking the nightstand drawers I found an envelope taped to the bottom of one,” Beth said.

      Jane’s eyes filled with interest as Antoine held up the envelope but didn’t offer to hand it to her. “We’d like to see if you can pull some fingerprints from either the envelope or the notes inside, but before I give this to you I would like you to promise to keep this strictly confidential between the three of us.”

      Jane frowned and raked a hand through her curly light brown hair. “I can’t make that promise without seeing what you have.” There was a hint of steel in her voice.

      Antoine held her gaze for a long moment and then offered her the envelope. “What I’m hoping is that you can lift some prints and then give us a little time to do some investigating on our own before letting anyone else know about it.”

      Jane didn’t take the envelope from him, but instead opened her office door and gestured them outside. “Bring it into the lab. I don’t want to touch it without gloves. As it is I’ll need to print both you and Beth so we can discount your prints on everything.”

      They entered a small lab where Jane grabbed a kit from one of the metal shelves against the wall and then stepped up to a work table and pulled on latex gloves. Only then did she take the envelope from Antoine.

      As she read the notes her eyes widened once again and when she finished she stared at first Antoine, then at Beth.

      “These need to go to Jake,” she said.

      “Eventually I’ll hand them over to him,” Antoine replied. “But let’s be serious here. The local law officials haven’t exactly proven themselves to be good, upstanding people. Even your own boss was proven to be untrustworthy.”

      Jane’s face flushed and she looked down at the notes she’d spread out on the table. Amos Andrews, Jane’s boss, had not only tried to screw up her investigation into the bombing of the limo, he’d also tried to kill Jane. When he’d been arrested he’d made it clear that he was just a bit player in a larger conspiracy against the visiting royals, hired by somebody he refused to name.

      “So, what exactly is it you want from me?” she asked with a weary sigh.

      “Just a little time,” Antoine replied.

      “How much time?” she asked.

      “Seventy-two hours,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.

      Jane said nothing. She opened the kit and withdrew several brushes and powder compounds in small bottles. As she began her work, Beth couldn’t help but gaze at Antoine again and again.

      He stood rigid and once again she felt the energy wafting from him. And why wouldn’t he be tense? The stakes couldn’t be higher. Somebody wanted him and the other participants in the COIN coalition dead.

      They didn’t know at this time if the people who were behind the conspiracy had already achieved the goal of killing one of them—Amir.

      Antoine slid a glance at her and offered her a small smile that shot a hint of warmth in his cool blue eyes. Beth had always believed the term bedroom eyes meant dark and smoky and slightly mysterious, but she now recognized that bedroom eyes could be the cool blue of a mountain lake.

      “I hope you find a useable fingerprint,” he said, his focus back on Jane. “When I know the identity of the person who wrote those notes, I will make certain he’s never a threat to anyone again.”

      His